Arbitrariness
,Innocence
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Oct 29, 2015
Capital punishment is dominating the discussion in the runoff election between James E. Stewart, Sr. and Dhu Thompson to succeed acting Caddo Parish, Louisiana District Attor…
Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,Dec 20, 2023
On December 12, 2023 U.S. Dis…
Innocence
,Race
,Representation
,Religion
,United States Supreme Court
,Women
,Feb 15, 2021
NEWS (2/11/21) — Alabama: In a splintered vote with three conservative justices noting their dissents, the U.S. Supreme Court denied the Alabama Attorney General’s application to vacate a …
Representation
,Oct 26, 2020
NEWS (10/22/20) — Florida: The Florida Supreme Court has upheld the conviction and death sentence for Daniel Craven, Jr.
Race
,Nov 11, 2021
A Nashville judge has for a second time approved a plea deal that would remove Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman from Tennessee’s death row and resentence him to life without possibility of parole. On November…
Race
,Oct 20, 2022
The process of death qualification, which excludes people who oppose the death penalty from serving on capital juries, is racially discriminatory, civil rights advocate Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II wrote in an October 10, 2022 op-ed. …
Innocence
,Race
,Sep 13, 2021
Former Mississippi death-row prisoner Curtis Flowers (pictured), who was exonerated in 2020, is suing the officials whose misconduct led to his arrest and repeated wrongful conviction. Flowers was tried six times…
Innocence
,Intellectual Disability
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,Mar 23, 2018
New court filings argue that Columbus, Georgia prosecutors had a pattern and practice of systematically striking black prospective jurors because of their race, discriminatorily empanelling all- or nearly-all-white juries to try b…
Arbitrariness
,May 04, 2022
The capital sentencing trial of Nikolas Cruz in the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School (pictured) in Parkland, Florida has been delayed once again as jury selection in the …
Race
,Federal Death Penalty
,Nov 17, 2020
Lawyers for federal death-row prisoner Orlando Hall (pictured), who is scheduled to be executed on November 19, 2020, have filed a motion to stay his execution based upon evidence that his death sentence was a product of pervasive…
Innocence
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,Nov 17, 2016
The Louisiana Supreme Court has overturned the conviction of Rodricus Crawford (pictured) and ordered that he be given a new trial in a controversial death penalty case that attracted national attention amid evide…
Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,Sentencing Alternatives
,Mar 08, 2022
Timothy Foster, whose conviction and death sentence were overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2016 because Georgia prosecutors discriminatorily struck Black jurors from serving in his case, has been resentenced…
Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,United States Supreme Court
,Apr 05, 2018
Race discrimination exists at every stage of the death-penalty process, says veteran death-penalty and civil-rights lawyer Stephen B. Bright (pictured), but “the most pervasive discrimination that is going on is in jury selection.…
Race
,Sep 23, 2022
Lawyers for a North Carolina capital defendant have filed a sweeping challenge to the method by which death-penalty jurors are empaneled, arguing that the combination of a process known as “death qualification” and discretionary j…
Race
,Sep 28, 2020
The North Carolina Supreme Court has ordered that three African American death-row prisoners who had proven that their death sentences violated the state’s since repealed Racial Justice Act (RJA) must be resenten…
Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,Feb 20, 2024
In a February 14, 2024 op-ed published in the Washington Post, the longtime defense lawyer, former director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, and law professor Stephen Bright highlights the continued illegal exclusion of Black jurors in vio…
Race
,Feb 27, 2024
A new report from Berkeley Law’s Death Penalty Clinic finds that just 19 states collect race and ethnicity information from prospective jurors, meaning that
Arbitrariness
,Race
,Aug 18, 2015
A new study of trials in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, revealed that potential jurors who were black were much more likely to be struck from juries than non-blacks. The results we…
United States Supreme Court
,Federal Death Penalty
,Oct 14, 2021
A United States Supreme Court sharply divided along ideological lines heard oral argument October 13, 2021 on the Department of Justice’s appeal of a federal circuit court’s ruling overturning the death sentences imposed on
Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,United States Supreme Court
,May 23, 2016
On May 23, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the conviction and death sentence of Timothy Foster (pictured) because Georgia prosecutors improperly exercised their discretionary jury strikes on the basi…
Race
,Mar 12, 2021
A federal appeals court has permitted a Texas district court to dismiss a death-row prisoner’s claim that Dallas prosecutors unconstitutionally struck Black jurors in his case without considering evidence of racia…
